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Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) distanced fellow American Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) during the rain-soaked final stage in the Nice hills to secure overall victory at Paris-Nice.
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) won the final stage on the Nice seafront, beating Jorgenson in a two-rider sprint after they cracked McNulty on the Côte de Peille climb with 40 km to race.
They were joined by Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) and the trio surged away from McNulty and a quality chase group. On the final climb of Col d’Èze. Vlasov was dropped and Jorgenson and Evenepoel shared the work to ensure the American won overall and the Belgian climbed to second overall.
McNulty finished in a chase group with Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) at 1:39 and so managed to hold onto third overall at 1:47. Evenepoel finished just 30 seconds down on Jorgenson.
Evenepoel celebrated with his new ‘dialed-in’ victory salute but conceded that Jorgensen deserved to win Paris-Nice.
“I should be more than happy with the end of this beautiful week,” Evenepoel said after his first ever victory in France.
“Only one guy could follow me: Matteo. So I think he deserves to win. I went all in three times on the Côte de Peille and he was the only one to follow. Matteo is the deserved winner of the race. If you see two days ago how strong he was in the break and we had to chase him.
“We wanted to set the pace on the Côte de Peille but the bunch…
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